Technorati

Search this blog

Sunday, October 30, 2011

puzzle math - from the comments

My son did no prep for the SAT when he took it in 6th grade and got a 720 on the math part. I'm quite sure that he'll do better on it when he takes it as high schooler next year without doing any SAT prep. The math questions just aren't all that hard.

to which SteveH responds:

He had all of the material on the SAT by 6th grade? You are using this as normal?

gswp's reply:

No, he had not had all the SAT math. He'd had a very feeble algebra series in school (The Key to Algebra) and had self-taught geometry from a good book (he'd gotten through about half of Art of Problem Solving Geometry). The SAT supposedly tests much more than he had had at that point, but the questions are more like simple puzzles than testing content knowledge.

Gswp is exactly right! Setting aside the issue of the SAT using core features of cognitive function to produce error, which it does, SAT math is middle school puzzle math.